What do you know about Carnegie Mellon?

University of California Davis or Carnegie Mellon University (Information Networking Institute)?

• Hi all, I am a current CS undergrad and have been accepted to both these schools for my Masters. Though my first preference is obviously Carnegie Mellon, I would like to know if its worth considering Davis too for its proximity to Silicon Valley( or other reasons?) P.S : I am more inclined towards MS CS but I heard INI has good flexibility allowing you to take CS classes of your choice. I am planning to pursue thesis option for my masters and might/might not do a PhD.

• Answer:

  Aah, that's a hard choice indeed. I'm a UCD CS undergrad and CMU SE grad alum. If you had said MS CS at CMU then it'd obviously be a no brainer. My personal experience has been that a) CS is more "useful" as a subject than SE or INI etc. and b) CMU is way sexier as a brand than UCD. Davis's proximity to SV will help with recruiting in the sense of you being able to drive there easily for interviews (assuming you have a car). It will not however, open doors for you at SV's top companies. Google won't look at you and neither will hot startups - unless you already have another sexy brand. With CMU on your resume, it'll be a nightmare having to fly to SV but at least your resume won't be tossed out the window at the outset. Once you have an interview scheduled however, the CS is *way* more useful. For me, my MS was totally useless except at opening doors but because I had a very strong CS undergrad, I fell back upon it during interviews. (Contrary to popular biases, Davis's CS dept is actually quite decent, at least at the undergrad level.) After you actually get an offer, the skillsets required to excel at most "normal" (i.e. non-specialized) jobs don't overlap much with either INI or CS except at the most basic level (i.e. being able to code and being able to debug stuff) so I wouldn't worry about what you're actually learning (or not) except if you're intellectually interested in it. Overall, this is a tough call. I'd say if you can get enough CS classes to get a solid foundation via INI then CMU is better, but you also need to balance cost, location etc. and anything else that matters to you. Edit: I did not seriously consider a PhD, so you should check with PhD admissions before making a decision. My answer does not take that into consideration.